Breaking News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

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• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/3/2020
  

  He Escaped Death as a Kamikaze Pilot. 70 Years Later, He Told His Story.

  "As the generation who lived through the war fades away, Japan’s opposing political sides are vying to reinterpret the kamikaze for a public still divided over the conflict’s legacy."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/3/2020
  

  The Trump Administration Just Made the Citizenship Test Harder. How Would You Do?

  Can you ace the new test for becoming a naturalized US Citizen? 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/2/2020
  

  Trump Hints at Another Act in Four Years, Just Like Grover Cleveland

  Trump would join several one-term presidents who sought a non-consecutive second term. The effort ended badly for most of them. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/1/2020
  

  Laws and Customs Guide Presidential Transitions — But Some Go off the Rails Anyway

  "Since 1937, Election Day and Inauguration Day have been about 75 days apart — not much time to set up a new administration, but plenty of time for things to go wrong."

• 
• SOURCE: The Hill
  12/2/2020
  

  Democrats Introduce Legislation to Strike Slavery Exception in 13th Amendment

  The proposal would eliminate a loophole written into the 13th Amendment that allows involuntary servitude to be imposed on persons convicted of a crime. Some recent scholars have argued that this exemption is a foundation of the current system of mass incarceration. 

• 
• SOURCE: University of Virginia
  12/1/2020
  

  How the 1968 Presidential Transition Compares to Today’s

  by Marc Selverstone

  Taped recordings from the Lyndon Johnson White House reveal the conflict between LBJ and Richard Nixon over the degree to which a president-elect could expect to influence policy before being inaugurated. 

• 
• SOURCE: WGBH
  11/27/2020
  

  The Legacy Of Tunney Lee: Preserving The History Of Boston's Chinatown

  An interdisciplinary panel of scholars discusses the contributions of the late MIT urban studies professor Tunney Lee to historic preservation and the relationship of immigrant communities to urban environments.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  11/30/2020
  

  Campaigners Launch Legal Challenge Over Stonehenge Road Tunnel

  A plan to tunnel underneath the site of Stonehenge to expand a British highway is controversial and reflects different understandings of preservation. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/30/2020
  

  Hidden in Plain Sight: The Ghosts of Segregation

  Journalist and photographer Richard Frishman examines traces of segregation and racial exclusion in the built environment of the US.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/1/2020
  

  Exhume the Body of Warren G. Harding? A Judge Says That Won’t Be Necessary

  Previously resistant descendants of Warren G. Harding had denied proof based on commercial DNA testing that plaintiff James Blaesing was Harding's grandson. With exhumation looming, they conceded that Blaesing was a descendant of Harding and mistress Nan Britton. 

• 
• SOURCE: American Historical Association
  12/1/2020
  

  AHA Joins Lawsuit to Protect Historical Records

  The AHA is party to a lawsuit pressing the Trump administration and the National Archives to comply with laws requiring complete preservation of presidential records. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/25/2020
  

  The Myth of North America, in One Painting

  Explore an immersive, interactive page that shows how "The Death of General Wolfe" by Benjamin West created a heroic myth of the British defeat of the French near Quebec, which helped decide the Seven Years War.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/30/2020
  

  When an Enemy’s Cultural Heritage Becomes One’s Own

  As the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region enters a cease-fire, what are the prospects for protecting sites of cultural and historical significance from destruction as acts of reprisal? History suggests it's possible, though difficult.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/30/2020
  

  The Country’s Oldest Chinatown is Fighting for its Life in San Francisco

  Tourism to San Francisco has fallen by half since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and tourist spending has declined even further, impacting many of Chinatown's businesses as well as its social life. 

• 
• SOURCE: National Security Archive
  11/24/2020
  

  Jonathan Pollard: Revisiting a Still Sensitive Case

  The National Security Archive is republishing its trove of declassified documents related to Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s. Pollard's parole recently ended. 

• 
• SOURCE: CBS News
  11/29/2020
  

  Finding the Last Ship Known to have Brought Enslaved Africans to America and the Descendants of its Survivors

  "The Clotilda was burned and sunk in an Alabama River after bringing 110 imprisoned people across the Atlantic in 1860. Two years ago, its remains were found."

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/29/2020
  

  Trump Looms Large Now, but Maybe Not Forever

  by Steve Inskeep

  NPR's Steve Inskeep reflects on the prospect that historical distance will make Trump and Trumpism smaller (and not all-consuming) parts of a story about American society struggling with bigger questions of political, economic and social equality that became increasingly contentious during the Obama era. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/29/2020
  

  The Cost of Trump’s Assault on the Press and the Truth

  New Yorker editor David Remnick writes that while Trump is not the first president to battle the media, his apparent belief that the press exists as his public relations agency--and anger that it doesn't work that way--are leading him to attack a fundamental institution of society with deadly consequences.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/30/2020
  

  Why New York’s Mob Mythology Endures

  by Adam Gopnik

  "Generally, in Mob stories, the cute bits are not real, and the real bits are not cute. Given that grim truth, there’s something to be said for just shutting your eyes and repeating the cute bits." Some new books on the Mafia unfortunately follow the pattern. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/29/2020
  

  The 10th President’s Last Surviving Grandson: A Bridge to the Nation’s Complicated Past

  by Gillian Brockell

  Harrison Ruffin Tyler, at age 91, is a rare example of a person whose life and family history connect the present to the era of the early republic in two generations.